


Fox in the Hen House

by AndreaDTX



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 22:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaDTX/pseuds/AndreaDTX
Summary: Arthur grew up the only male in a brothel. This is glossed over in the movie, but would probably give him both unique perspective and unique experiences. What was that like for Arthur?





	Fox in the Hen House

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This began as me just wondering what it was like for a guy to grow up in a brothel. It then kind of morphed into an exploration of how brothel life may have affected Arthur's sexual maturation (the therapist in me couldn't help it). This story is about his childhood and ends when he is around 16-17. It does contain sexual situations. However, I did not tag it underage because (according to Google research) the age of consent in Arthurian times was around 10 and children could be promised for marriage as early as age 7. Lucy's attitude would actually be considered quite progressive. Arthur is still what we, in modern times, would consider a teenager. SO BE WARNED.

When people found out Arthur had been raised in a brothel, they always seemed to assume he’d lived a life of unfettered, carnal pleasure. ‘A fox in the hen house’ was a phrase he heard bandied about quite often. _The things that boy must have seen and done!_ Personally, though, it struck Arthur as odd that no one ever seemed to consider that these ladies were the same women who’d changed his nappies when he was a baby and helped him change his trousers when he was still of tender age and learning to control when and where he relieved himself. They’d dried his tears after countless nightmares and mopped his brow when he burned with fever. For all intents and purposes, they were his family. He harbored no carnal desire towards them nor did they towards him. Even now, when the furtive glances of the more demure, proper women on the streets assured him that he was a pleasing sight, the ladies of the inn still treated him like a cosseted son, a favorite nephew, an annoying brother or cousin.

Truth be told, when the customers weren’t around stirring up trouble, life in the inn was pretty dull. As the only male in the house, Arthur had a small room off the side of the house to himself. Small and drafty, it was still a somewhat quiet place for him to retreat when he was tired of hearing the ladies talk or for them to send him when they were equally tired of seeing his face. He had chores and it was expected that they’d be done. Not that the ladies would ever try to tan his hide or box his ears like some of the other boys in the town complained of their parents doing, but their disappointment when he didn’t pull his weight was palpable. And considering what they did to earn their keep, menial chores seemed a trivial reciprocation. So, he chopped and toted wood, swept and scrubbed floors, fetched food and drink from the market, and helped carry the laundry to the river. Once he was big and strong enough not to get swept away in the river flow, he helped with the wash, even though it sometimes meant he was the only boy as far as the eye could see. Still, it never occurred to him to mind helping. He was close to end of his first decade before he was first teased about doing ‘women’s work’.

“There’s no such thing as ‘women’s work’,” Lucy had said. “That’s an excuse lazy menfolk use to get out of helpin’. We all live there so we all pull our own weight to keep it ship shape whatever it takes.”

Arthur agreed and by then he’d already lost much of his ability to blush or be embarrassed about anything having to do with the inn or what his family did there.

Nevertheless, there were moments where he saw and heard things far sooner than a boy his age otherwise would. He distinctly remembered when he first saw bare breasts. He was about six summers old and had been living in the inn for years. The ladies were supremely comfortable with his presence and still often referred to him as ‘baby’ or ‘the wee lad’. Whoever was responsible for him on any particular day kept him nearby as they went about their normal routine.

On that day, he was with Marissa. Only about ten summers or so his senior, she doted on him saying that he reminded her of her youngest brother. Her smile was always so sad when she said this, he never asked what’d happened to the boy. Regardless, she was nice and he liked spending time with her. He’d tagged along as she’d gone to market and done washing and sat on the floor of the communal sleeping room as she changed from her more tattered ‘errand’ clothes to more alluring, ‘keeping company’ clothes. It was something that had happened around him countless times, any number of the ladies changing as he sat on the floor playing with his wire soldiers, conversation flowing freely. But for some reason, on this day, he looked up and noticed in a way he hadn’t before. Marissa was topless, her smooth, pale skin lightly freckled and backlit by sun filtering around the window coverings. She had small, firm breast tipped with large, rose-pink nipples. Arthur stopped talking, his rambling commentary of his soldiers’ epic battle stalling out, and he stared. Not because it was physically appealing; it would be a handful of summers more before he would begin to feel the pull of those kind of urges. He simply found himself struck. Her body was different from his own. He already understood on a basic level that he was a boy and everybody else was a girl, but it had never really meant anything until just then.

Realizing that he had lapsed into silence, Marissa looked up and noticed his rapt gaze. She blushed faintly, pulled a tunic over her head, and started asking him questions about his soldiers’ next move before leading him into the kitchen where she cut him shavings of roast and cheese for his mid-day meal. It left Arthur feeling as though he’d done something wrong, but he wasn't quite sure what. No one ever said anything about it, but from then on, he was required to sit outside the door any time anyone was changing clothes.

Not every discovery Arthur made was as innocent. Like when he found out about the disconcerting carnal desires certain types of customers had. During Arthur’s eighth summer, a very wealthy traveling merchant came in. He was flush with coin and very generous about sharing it. The ladies did everything to make him feel welcome and Arthur did his best to stay out of the way as they entertained. But somehow, he kept landing at the center of the man’s attention. At first it was just surprise at Arthur’s presence, not an uncommon reaction from men, with families back home, who were surprised to see a child in such a place. One of the ladies quickly explained that Arthur was their ward and sent him off to the kitchen. Later, the man insisted Arthur sit next to him as they ate. Arthur didn’t mind. The man smiled a lot and told fantastic stories about the places he’d visited during his travels. He even gave Arthur a coin with weirding markings that he swore was from the Orient. Eventually, the meal ended and Katia began to draw the merchant into the reclining rooms, a space explicitly forbidden to Arthur since he’d burst in on Ingrid and a customer a few months back after he’d mistaken cries of the heat of the moment for pleas for help. It had been very embarrassing for all involved.

For reasons Arthur couldn’t understand at the time, the man kept looking at him even as Katia tried to refocus the odd and intense attention. She gave him her best smile, tilting her head to peek at him from under the curtain of her hair. Yet he still hesitated. Then the man put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and suggested that the boy might like to go with them. Katia frowned, confused by the suggestion. Arthur and Katia might not have understood, but Lucy did and she came over to politely, but firmly, inform the man that he was welcome to the services of anyone in the house _except_ for their ward who did not offer such services. The man balked, disappointed, but followed Katia without much more fuss. Later, Arthur had questioned Lucy. She’d hesitated but then explained that some people got a thrill from doing things they shouldn’t. That merchant had either thought it would be thrilling to lie with Arthur himself or watch Katia and Arthur together in some manner. Arthur had shuddered, frightened and more than a little repulsed by the idea. He didn’t want to lie with anyone. Not Katia, who he liked because she always took the time to cut his hair when it got too long, and least of all the merchant who no longer seemed so nice. Lucy had rushed to assure him that no one who passed through their doors had the right to make that request and that such a thing would never be expected of him.

“If anyone _ever_ claims they paid for such a privilege, you come find me right away, you hear?” she’d said with an odd tightness in her voice.  

Not all advances were as unappealing as the merchant, though. Eventually, Arthur reached his twelfth summer and began to understand how the ladies were able to make a living solely on their charm and company. He now had urges and interests and not a whole lot of ways to explore them. He was constantly surrounded by carnality and it probably inflamed his desires more than they otherwise would have been, but he may as well have been a leper to the girls his age in town. He knew they found him attractive, but avoided him as he had no prospects to speak of. And the ladies were _not_ an option. They saw him as a child and he viewed them as aunts and older sisters.

Except for Elena.

Elena was new and decidedly _not_ like family. She was twenty summers old and had golden skin, long, dark hair, and warm eyes that seemed to dance with mirth, as though she knew a wonderful secret no one else was privy to. She listened when he talked and treated him as though his thoughts and words were of the utmost importance. She did not treat him like a child, never referred to him as ‘lad’ or ‘baby’ or said that he reminded her of a younger family member. And given that he’d been growing like mad, taller than most horses at the withers, that made him feel good.

The two often sat and talked from the hours just before daybreak when the last of the patrons left for the night until almost mid-day when the rest of the house began to rouse for the day. Sometimes, Elena would lay her head on his shoulder as they talked, her hand coming to rest on his chest, a soft weight that made him uncannily aware of his heart thumping wildly like a hare that had caught sight of a hawk. Other times, they would sit in silence, his head resting on the soft slope where her shoulder met her breast, as she slowly ran her fingers through his hair in a tugging, scratching, pattern that made his skin tingle and his stomach churn in a very pleasant way.

His twelfth summer faded into his thirteenth and their talks and head scratches slid into long minutes of kissing and firm caresses that sometimes left Arthur blushing madly as his body clamored for relief and, at times, achieved it even without his permission. Elena laughed, the tones like fingers plucking softly across harp cords, assuring him that it was perfectly normal and all was well as long as he was enjoying himself.

One early morning, after what his loins and lungs told him had been an eternity of kissing, but the more reasonable part of his brains told him had probably been half an hour’s time, Elena invited him to go to the reclining rooms. When his brain had time to catch up with her meaning, Arthur softly declined. He enjoyed Elena and what they did together and didn’t want to associate it with the less personal work the ladies did there not because they wanted to but because they had to. Instead, he and Elena ended up in his room. Usually, the cool breeze bothered him, but on that particular night, it was no match for the heat inside and actually came as a relief.

Arthur and Elena dropped on to his bed, him on his back and her splayed on his lap, her weight a delicious pressure unlike any he’d ever felt before. Elena leaned forward and kissed him while continuing the firm press of her hips. Arthur kissed back until he had to tear away to breathe, his lungs working as though he’d run to the far riverbank and back. With a coy smile, Elena sat up, shifting her body in a way that gave him goose flesh. She pulled her linen covering over her head, revealing breasts that seemed large for her frame, tipped with dark nipples, different from what he'd seen before. His eyes followed the lines of her body down to the dark vee between her legs. Painfully aware that the thin material of his trousers was the sole barrier between them, he stared, only breaking his gaze when she began to slowly trail a hand down his chest, towards his belly and lower. Arthur panted in anticipation, too overwhelmed to touch back, his muscles coiling tighter every second.

In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that the tension would snap as soon her slender fingers loosed the fastenings of his breeches and wrapped around the turgid flesh that impatiently waited inside, leaving him both drowsily relaxed and morbidly embarrassed. Elena had sighed with a smile and promised they could try again before she demurely wiped the evidence of his pleasure from her hand and kissed away his embarrassed apologies.

But there had been no more tries. When Elena had slipped out of Arthur’s room, she’d let out a startled yelp. Arthur had jumped from the bed, not even righting his clothing, and slipped out right behind her. Where they both ran headlong into Lucy waiting outside the door cover, arms folded, face blank. Elena’s skin paled under its normal golden glow and her gaze dropped. She mumbled her leave and hurried past to the sleeping room the ladies shared. Lucy turned to look at Arthur, her eyes visibly taking in his appearance head to toe. He thought he’d long lost the ability to blush, but he’d quickly found it under Lucy’s scrutinizing eye. But she didn’t yell. Instead, she simply bade him to wash up for mid-day meal, before turning towards the kitchen.

By the time Arthur cleaned up, gained control of his furious blush, and made his way to the dining table, Elena was nowhere to be found and no one would look him in the eye. For the first time ever, the girls presented a united front _against_ him, refusing to answer any questions about what happened and where she might have gone. The atmosphere in the inn was tense, with the girls either flat out ignoring him or speaking to him in clipped tones, addressing him as Arthur rather than the pet names he thought he hated. It was as though, for the first time, they realized they had a man, with male urges, living with them, and it made them uncomfortable. He spent more time out and about with Back Lack and Wet Stick, but he’d never felt lonelier or more confused.

The strain continued until Arthur couldn’t stand it anymore. He waited until he and Lucy where at the riverbank with a stretch of land that gave at the illusion of privacy.

“Why’s everybody so mad at me, Luce?”

Lucy looked genuinely surprised. “Nobody’s mad at you, Arthur.”

He scoffed. “Right. They’re just not talking to me and avoiding me like the rest of the town avoids all of you.”

Lucy’s lips pursed and she scrubbed her sheets with a vengeance.

Arthur rinsed out the shirt he’d been working on in silence. “You know, it’s really not fair. We barely did anythin’ and nowhere near the stuff you girls do every night. I don’t get mad at any of you ever.”

Lucy blanched. “I told you. Nobody’s mad.”

“Well, maybe it’s a women’s thing because it sure _feels_ like mad.”

She sighed and let the sheet drop into the water. “They’re not mad. They’re sad, love.”

Arthur’s brow furrowed. “Sad? Why?”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out, clearly using the time to consider her words. “You’re our baby, Art. And even though you live with us, I think we kinda took comfort that you could enjoy an innocence we all gave up long ago to survive. I think it caught us by surprise to find out that you had… given up that innocence and that it was one of us that had taken it.”

He felt his cheeks burn. “I—you had to have known I would… ya know… eventually.”

Lucy hummed in agreement.

“Plus, I didn’t—I’m pretty sure I’m still the most innocent person in the house.”

Lucy laughed, picked her sheet back up. “I tell you what. If you promise that any further… dalliances will be years down the line and outside of the inn, I’ll talk to the ladies and break them out of their mourning, alright?”

Arthur agreed and Lucy kept her end of the deal. Over the next week, things went more or less back to normal. Arthur also kept his promise which was why there was no further drama three years later when he actually fully acted on his urges with a young, doe-eyed widow one town over.

While his upbringing may not have been conventional, it was as normal as he could have hoped for. He had a huge family that looked out for him. He’d gotten a coin every time he lost a tooth. They’d celebrated his birthday, which he eventually found out was actually the day they found him. He didn’t go to regular school, but Lucy made sure he could read and write and work figures. Life in the brothel was nowhere near what people probably imagined.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been for what happened next, there would have been absolutely nothing distinguishing about his life at all.  

**Author's Note:**

> Comments (and kudos) welcomed but this is my first foray out of strictly gen fic so please be kind.


End file.
